Change is coming to Social Media and the X-odus and the explosive growth of Blue Sky is just the start.

Blue Sky grew from a few million users to 23 million in three weeks. And not just any users, pretty much all of the core contributors on Twitter have joined the X-odus. Blue Sky has critical mass now, Twitter is starting to deflate.

I have seen a lot of social media go from dominant to dead in the space of a few months: AOL, MySpace, GeoCities, USENET. All gone like tears in the rain.

And don't think that Facebook can't fall as well. It's the toe, not the whole jackboot on the scales at Facebook. But the whole algorithm is skewed for facists. I received the content strike for mentioning The Zuck breaking bread with the Rapist of Mar-a-Largo.

Whether the Fediverse survives or thrives is going to depend on whether it stays on the sidelines of the transformation or is a part of making it happen.

The ATmosphere protocol used by Blue Sky is at least in theory a federated protocol. Whether that is true in practice has yet to be seen. I plan to be setting up my own PDS and testing that federation claim. But more importantly, I am looking at ways to bridge from the ATmosphere to other protocols and communities.

What Facebook offers and Blue Sky does not is forums for private groups. And it is really not clear how the AT protocol lends itself to that mode. Contrawise, the Mathematical Mesh I developed is designed for end-to-end secure private groups with encrypted data at rest. So why not try to put the two together?

I think I have an approach worked out that allows me to use OAUTH2 to bind an account on a private group forum to a Blue Sky account. So this would allow me to use one credential to log into Blue Sky and my private groups. Joining a group is inevitably going to introduce a bit of friction because the whole point of having private groups is they are private, you have to be allowed to join.

I have already bound my Blue Sky account to my private domain so I am @phill.hallambaker.com there.

I would really like to be the same here in the Fediverse.

OK so I have this problem, I want to have a brain floating in a jar in my office. I want it to be floating in potable water and for it to be possible to reach into the jar and pull it out to show there are no wires attached.

The brain will light up in response to internet commands with the ability to light different parts of the cortex in different colors.

So far, so good, got all of that worked out. 3D print brain in PLA, paint. Alternatively, make mold, cast in silicone. Take power off an inductive loop built into the base of the display. Low power RaPi or similar takes instructions over WiFi, lights up LEDs.

Here is the part I haven't worked out: How do I get my brain to float in the dead center of the jar so that it is completely submerged and not touching the bottom? I can make it close to neutrally buoyant, but that isn't going to be enough. I want it to settle at a specific depth.

Easy enough to cause the volume of the brain to shrink as it descends, just fill it with air. I want the volume to do the opposite so that I can trim it to the precise level I want.

My goal is of course to make two of these so that I can be the man with two brains.

Its called the bird site because that is how corporations posting to it rank the quality of the reader's brains.

"If you're an American, you statistically have a 95% chance of failing this basic world map quiz. Most Americans can't even name which country this is."

I read this as, "If you're an American, you statistically have a 95% chance of being incredibly stupid. Most Americans can't even name which country this is, they are that stupid. So are you going to continue to be stupid or are you going to click on our link to pass a really easy quiz that puts 90% of the people taking it in the top 10%."

I have been watching a series of YouTube videos on making your own bar clamps. Which could be a real money saver for some people because no matter how many clamps you have, you always find yourself needing just one more or in a different size.

Then it hit me, rather than making myself clamps, what I really need is a better pipe clamp. More specifically, what I need is a better fixed end for my existing pipe clamps. for the occasional jobs when my Bessy bar clamps aren't quite long enough.

The great thing about pipe clamps is that they are cheap and you can make them any length you want by buying more pipe.

What is not so great about pipe clamps is that the faces rack. The faces of my Bessy bar clamps remain absolutely parallel while my pipe clamps skew by ten to fifteen degrees. That is really not good if you are trying to make fine furniture.

So, my idea is this: Modify an existing pipe clamp so that the faces of the clamp remain parallel.

This is much easier than it appears because the part of the pipe clamp with the adjuster is screwed to the end of the pipe and is already pretty well set at 90 degrees to the pipe on my low end $12 clamps ends. If that turns out to be a problem, there are clamps with an additional brace to keep the adjuster arm at right angles to the pipe.

So the pare of the clamp I need to fix is the traveler. That is the part that skews over.

Seems to me that all I need to make a better traveler is a sufficiently long block of wood with a hole drilled through it and some means of fixing it to the pipe. This is only going to be an occasional use clamp for the occasions where I need one longer than six feet or I have run out of bar clamps. So, I don't need to be able to take the traveler on or off quickly. Can fasten it down with wood screws.

Having stopped the traveler slipping down the pipe, Providing a face at right angles to it is fairly simple: Just a piece of hardwood with a hole through the end.

Then to finish everything off, a series of 3d printed clips that slide onto the pipe providing a constant offset from the pipe itself and a flat surface for the project to rest against.

Cover all the surfaces touching the project with some glue resistant material and it is finished...

Been here less than a month. 300 followers already and not by following everyone indiscriminately.

Looks to me like Mastodon is starting to really take off.

The hard question is going to be scaling the servers. At some point, there is going to have to be a business model for service providers.

Space Elmo's $8/mo is reasonable but I am thinking $4/mo is going to be more affordable.

Update: One thing that Space Elmo has and Mastodon does not is a badge to show who is contributing. Is that a good idea or not though? It is clearly a terrible idea on Twitter now because he has violated the community norms. But it does work on a lot of forums like RPF etc.